Phone calls continue to be a commonly used and convenient method of contacting a business or person. Although email and chat messaging are gaining popularity, phone calls remain a valuable tool for consumer-to-business (C2B) interaction. Similarly, phone calls remain the dominant form of communication between individuals or consumers.
Businesses often use conventional interactive voice response (IVR) systems to interact with consumers. A phone keypad or voice input to the phone may be used by the caller to interact with a conventional IVR system, where speech recognition software is typically used to read and/or digitize the voice inputs. Conventional IVR systems typically provide an automated response to the inputs such as presenting a recorded message or placing the caller on hold. Additionally, conventional IVR systems may transfer the caller to a human agent at some point during the call to provide further assistance to the caller.
Although conventional IVR systems allow automated interaction with callers, the content available for this interaction is limited. For example, verbal recordings used by conventional IVR systems may be confusing or frustrating to some callers when providing instructions for navigating a webpage or performing some other task. As another example, conventional IVR systems typically utilize verbal recordings in a limited number of languages, and thus, callers who speak other languages may be unable to interact with conventional IVR systems.